Re: back-forward functionality in 'cd'

[Eric Blake]

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According to Arjun Shankar on 5/24/2006 6:30 AM:
> Hi!
> 
> Someone just handed me a nifty bit of shell script that works like
> 'cd', with the added advantage of being able to go back and forward
> ('cd ]' takes you forward, and 'cd [' takes you back to the last
> directory), just like text based file browsers (nautilus etc).
> Basically, It is something better than 'cd -'. Wouldn't it be a good
> idea to include it as an option in the actual 'cd'? I think such an
> option makes for much easier directory traversal.

Coreutils does not provide cd, so this is the wrong list to ask.  cd is
usually provided as a shell builtin.

> I believe POSIX does
> not allow this, and that you would like to stick with what you got
> already, but I guessed you would consider this, because it makes
> things a lot easier.

You nailed it - cd is specified by POSIX, and changing it as you proposed
would be a POSIX incompatibility, so I doubt you will be able to get bash,
ksh, zsh, or any other shell to change their implementation of cd.  It
might be possible to provide it as an extension, by using an new option to
cd (so you might type something like 'cd -f' to go forward); but even that
is unlikely, since the pushd and popd builtins of bash already have the
ability to traverse a directory stack, which sounds like the feature you
are asking for.

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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